I’m involved in some research which brings together so many of the disciplines I study, it makes me giddy. The end result would be instantaneous point-to-point communication regardless of distance.
Can you say “So long, light barrier”?
Have you ever played catch with a tennis ball tossed against the side of a house or wall or something similar?
Do this for a while and you’ll discover the ball returns differently depending on where you bounce it off the wall. Generally, toss the ball high, it returns high, toss it low, it returns low.
This assumes you toss the ball straight at the wall. Toss the ball in an arc, bounce the ball before it hits the wall, things change.
An arc, a bounce, even a straight toss depending on height of impact, take different times between the toss and catch of the ball.
Usually.
Let’s say it doesn’t matter if you toss the ball so it arcs, bounces, or goes straight, toss to catch always takes the same amount of time.
Impossiroo?
Not really. That’s what this research is about.
A currently unexplained phenomenon is raising concerns among some, hackles among others, and giddiness with yours truly.
The ball is tossed and no matter where it’s tossed against the wall, it returns in the same amount of time each and every time.
But there’s a kicker.
There’s always a kicker.
Let’s go back to bouncing the ball off a wall. Remember that you had to move your glove around a bit to catch the ball? Even it you threw it from roughly the same spot?
That’s the kicker. You can throw the ball the exact same way each time, change the distance to the wall, and the ball returns in the same amount of time regardless.
Except sometimes it’s a flyball, sometimes it’s a grounder, sometimes it’s to your left, sometimes to your right.
The time out and back is constant, where the ball returns varies depending on distance to the wall.
Note this: not where you bounce against the wall, only the distance to the wall.
We toss the ball from Haystacks in Westford, Mass, to Mars and it bounces back and into our glove the moment it’s gone. We toss the ball from Haystacks to Jupiter and have to move our glove to Green Bank in West Virginia but transit time’s the same. Haystacks to Pluto? Move the glove to Goldstone in the Mojave. Toss the ball to Alpha Centauri and catch it in Chile. Aim at the Horsehead Nebula and you have to go around the world to catch it in New Zealand.
Toss it to Andromea and its caught on the Moon.
But the transit times remain the same.
There’s no change in the ball. What is tossed is returned.
Call the ball information.
Call the toss teleportation.
Which is where I come in.
Many, many, manymanymanymany years ago I demonstrated a theoretical framework which allowed for practical teleportation.
Nobody was interested. Wouldn’t work. Couldn’t be done. Just a mathematical gimmick. A trick. I was talking apportation. No practical implications whatsoever.
Yeah, well.
I guess the moral here is “Be careful who you share what with.”
When first approached, I replied, “I’m an author now. Most of what you need you can piece together from my books.”
“Do you still have copies of that work? It would save us a lot of time.”
Yeah.
Well.
Yes, I do, and No, it wouldn’t.
This is something we learned demonstrating the tech behind our last company.
We gave demonstrations and explained things in the simplest terms, and if people didn’t want to believe it worked, that was it, it didn’t matter, it couldn’t work, not for them, not really.
Something I’m demonstrating in my current work-in-progress, The Labyrinth.
I have one more question before I go.
Wanna play a game of catch?
| Donna Huston Murray and Fran Tabor get high points for playing last month’s Little Game. Fran offered you could tell if an elephant’s in bed with you because you woul smell peanut butter on its breath. The answer I know is by the big redE on their pajamas.
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RoundTable 360° – Our 30 April 2026 RoundTable 360° session is Your idea requires a subscription. Will tomorrow’s technology force you to change the tools you use for creation?
A digital photographer retouches their images on a computer. Hours of manual darkroom work, a collection of film rolls that capture color uniquely, and painting out imperfections. All this can be done with a few clicks today.
A digital painter or illustrator has access to an infinite number of colors, brushes and mediums. Endless canvas on a screen you can access anytime, anywhere.
A 3D artist has textures for anything with just a Google search, hardware that can show in real time what visual effects studios like Industrial Light and Magic had to wait weeks or hours to see the final result of.
A writer has paper and ink that never run out. Virtual assistants proof as you go and suggest more grammatically correct ways to convey a message (even as I write this). Sending your stories out into the world without even talking with a print shop about shipping logistics.
Technology has allowed people to be more creative more easily. But more features are getting locked behind subscriptions, you must agree to terms & conditions about sharing your data just to use your computer and the price of hardware is quickly escalating. What does the future of being creative look like to you?
Reserve your seat. |
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A Tool Requires Some Testing – Long ago and far away (okay, 2016) I switched to full-time authoring, knew my work needed improvement, took classes, read books, hired coaches, studied studied studied, and distilled some of the low-hanging fruit (word usage, language, tenses, clauses, …) into a tool that reads text and highlights weaknesses.
The tool helped me early on because it showed me how to tighten my writing by reading through a manuscript and finding weak words, unnecessary modifiers, passive voice, auxiliary verbs, weak POV, prepositional POV, … About 17 different problems in its current version (there’s five more things I could have it do, never got around to it).
I used this tool and hammered through lots of my early work and it helped greatly for two main reasons:
- I knew it wasn’t perfect
- It showed me weaknesses I didn’t know I had
The tool showed me how to improve my writing. Repeated use showed me I needed it less and less. After a few weeks I got to the point where the tool only showed me its own imperfections, not my weaknesses.
Currently the tool catches
- Unnecessary modifier
- Passive Voice and/or auxiliary verb
- Adverb/Adjective
- Weak POV
- Weak POV due to Preposition
- Unnecessary Pointer
- Weak Verb
- Attribution/Saidism
- Unnecessary Qualifier
- Duffer Dialogue
- Modal Verb
- Weak Word
- Clutter word(s)
- Mood Changer
- Manner Adverb
- Needless Word
- Flabby Speech
With a little extra effort on my part it can also catch Conjunctions, Subordinating Conjunctions, Relative Clauses, and the catch-alls “You Should Know Better” and “Word Vermin.” I never added last five because what I already put into it taught me enough to clean up my prose on my own.
And that’s the point; the tool’s purpose is to flag weaknesses so I could learn how to write better.
The tool is simple, moronic, and doltish. There’s no AI, no smarts, nothing sexy or exciting. It works via simple pattern matching, meaning it makes mistakes, won’t appreciate your voice and style, et cetera. It’s automated and has no intelligence, hence will flag things which fit a pattern whether the pattern applies or not. What will do is draw your attention to some quick&easy wins, and who doesn’t need more of those these days?
I and others find it’s valuable because it forces us to justify every word and every construction, meaning you learn to pay attention to sloppy writing habits, or as one author I’m working with commented “…it certainly forces you to justify every word, which any word that can be eliminated w/o loss of mood or meaning is, 90% of the time, best eliminated. (Publications that pay by the word encourage bad writing.)”
Take a look at the image on the left. Whatever is colored is potentially weak writing. That’s what the tool did to the first few paragraphs of last month’s newsletter musing.
I’m looking for authors interested in giving me feedback on it, specifically should I make it available on my site.
Interested? Send me one page you’ve written (500 words or less and only nb, doc, docX, or rtf, please), which catch you’re interested in, and I’ll get back to you usually within a day with the tool’s output. |
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Sister Natalie Sist Welcomes You to Mystic Living Today! Mystic Living Today is an online magazine or eZine, created to showcase and bring you information of an uplifting nature. Articles, interviews, press releases, reviews, poetry, stories are all brought to you in a very positive light. Please take a moment to browse the site and feel the love and joy it brings.
As we celebrate twenty-eight years online, we look forward to many more while continuing to provide you with the best metaphysical news and information. |
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Writers’ Month Long Workshop – April 2026’s writers’ workshop covers many if not all phases of craft and storytelling. The workshop is on Wednesdays, 1-29 Apr 2026, morning and evening openings available. Note there are five Wednesdays in April so folks get a bonus session this month only.
Sign up here.
You can an idea of what craziness (and learning!) will ensue on my Experiments in Writing posts. |
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Bound Together Books and Northern Lights Publishing Present… – Bound Together owner Michelle Audet’s asked me to help her vet authors and host regular author events at her West Peart St, Nashua, store. I’m currently seeking authors willing to give up a Saturday night, 6-8pmET, to talk about their work, take part in a panel discussion, give a class/training, read, sign, et cetera.
Email me if all the following are true
- You have at least one (1) book published and available. The more recently published the better, or if your book has a regional or seasonal tie in, also good.
- You can get to Nashua to drop off 5-10 of your books two weeks prior to your scheduled event AND for your scheduled event.
- You can make time for a Zoom chat with me so I can put together a 5-10m promo material for your book/topic/presentation. This means a hi-res headshot, hi-res bookcover, blurb, writeup, pitchline, teaser, backcover copy, related hi-res artwork, basically material we can put together to get the word out.
- And this is the big one: You will actively promote ALL author events, not just your own. Actively means via your social media (FB, LI, IG, TikTok, BlueSky, Mastodon, Cameroon, Dingbat, Marzipan (and yes, I made the last three up), your blog, … and several times, not just once. Fail to do so and you’re event will be canceled. This also applies to authors after their event. Failure to promote other authors brings your videos down.
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Talk with the Editors – Wilderness House Literary Review EIC Steve Glines and I (Senior Fiction Editor) hold monthly open chats with authors interested in a) writing for us, b) improving their craft in general, and/or c) increasing their chances of being accepted by other markets.
Meetings are held via Zoom on the last Friday of each month from 9-10amET.
So, want to know how to write for us? Want to know what gets our attention? Want to know how to write better for whatever market you’re interested in? Join us for our next “Meet the Editors” Zoom session. Seats limited! Sign up and talk with us. We’re relatively easy going and fun to be with. |
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Sister Donna Huston Murray’s Proof Positive PreOrder – Proof Positive: A heart-pounding mystery crime thriller you won’t want to end (A Lauren Beck Crime Novel Book 4)
A young ex-cop with nothing left to lose but her life, tackles a treacherous cold case.
Set in among northeastern Ohio’s farmland, the tiny town of Worthy rarely experiences a murder. So naturally, when a shooter fires into a group of senior dance students, killing a woman and maiming her partner, the county sheriff detains the only stranger who was there. Eying her across his desk, he’s not sure whether she’s the shooter, as some survivors claim, the vindictive person who hired the hit, or the calmest witness he ever met.
Lauren Beck stopped being a police officer in Landis, Pennsylvania, when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. She’s enormously grateful to be alive and cancer-free, but she’s still broke and homeless, the result of being framed by a felon for his many crimes. Worthy, Ohio, just happened to be the latest spot Lauren’s missing mother used her cell phone, the dance studio a place she might be found. Infuriated by the shooting, Lauren ran after the killer without thinking—in hindsight, a reckless mistake. Even after a homicide-detective/friend vouches for her, the sheriff warns her not to leave town.
Learning that the dance-studio victim was helping the FBI investigate a sensational bank robbery/multiple-murder case, Lauren’s cop instincts kick in. Was that why the woman was killed? Rather than interfere with the sheriff’s department, or, god-forbid, the FBI, Lauren quietly pursues the only avenue open to her: retracing the victim’s movements …
…and quickly learns why the case remains unsolved. Even after twenty-nine years, the perpetrator is well equipped to thwart law enforcement. Accomplices, both male and female, young and old, make each new lead Lauren follows more treacherous than the last.
Will she solve the heinous crime that confounded so many for so long?
Or, like her immediate predecessor, will she die trying?
If you like scrappy heroines, white-knuckle suspense, and twisted mysteries, you’ll love PROOF POSITIVE.
BUY NOW to read this unputdownable thriller tonight.
What early readers are saying:
“…a complex, wonderfully crafted tour de force.” Ralph Raunftr
“Donna Murray has done it again! There were moments when I was literally holding my breath!” Wendy B.
“Want a plot that genuinely surprises you? This delivers. …The day after finishing, the story came back to me like a film I saw, not like words I’d read. That organic, visual recall is something special.” Kristin Richter
“Layers upon layers … Far from your usual run-of-the-mill police procedural.” Elissa Strati |
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Brother Greg Hickey’s AI Encounter In recent months, Greg’s seen an uptick in solicitation emails offering to sell him some nebulous marketing package that will turn his book into an overnight bestseller. Some of these are obvious scams, such as the message he received this weekend that began:
:Hello Authors Greghickey,
While reviewing titles within your category, your book stood out.
Greg writes:
But lately, the pitches have been far more sophisticated. I suspect the best ones were written by an AI chatbot, but I still can’t help feeling the slightest bit flattered. I especially enjoy when I get an email with a glowing review of my dystopian novel Our Dried Voices. Because I’m pretty sure an artificial intelligence review of a novel about a fully automated future colony is the 2026 equivalent of rain on your wedding day.
But in all seriousness, these AI-written scam emails are a perfect illustration of one of the themes of Our Dried Voices: technology is a tool. Humans decide whether to use technology for productive or malicious purposes.
If you give an AI chatbot the right prompt, it can produce a passable sample of writing in a matter of seconds. You could use that output to lavish hollow praise on a book you never read in the hopes of selling a desperate author a service you never intend to deliver. Or you could use it to create marketing materials in your second language for a legitimate business so you can focus your time and effort on delivering the best possible product.
Our Dried Voices takes place in the last human colony on a distant planet. There, life is good for Samuel and the other survivors: prefabricated meals three times a day, a freshly made bed each night, and hours in between with nothing to do but play and relax. But when the machines that regulate their community begin to malfunction, Samuel and the other colonists face a test for the first time in their existence.
Our Dried Voices explores a world in which the existence of the human race depends on artificial intelligence. But as Samuel discovers, even a powerful tool like automation is only as useful as the person using it.
So what does AI think of Our Dried Voices? According to so-called “Book Club Expert” Madison Blake: “I was completely captivated. Your vision of a society on the brink of collapse is both haunting and deeply engaging, and the bond between Samuel and Penny adds such a relatable human touch. It is rare to find a dystopian world that feels so meticulously crafted yet emotionally resonant. You’ve created something truly special, Greg.”
While I doubt Madison or her chatbot actually read the novel, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. If you like false utopias, societies harboring dark secrets, and prophetic visions of humanity’s future, I think you’ll enjoy Our Dried Voices. And for a limited time, you can save on the ebook and signed paperback versions of this novel:
Get the ebook for 40% off
Get a signed paperback for 10% off
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Cicatrix needs first readers.
Paul is a mathematical genius. Nobody doubts that. His thesis demonstrates a way to mathematically bridge realities, to bring what’s “over there” to “here” and vice-versa.
The problem is nobody really knows what’s “over there,” and people can only imagine based on their experiences. You can describe the ocean to someone but until they experience it first hand, they really don’t understand it. Similarly, committees shouldn’t be allowed to design horses. Paul experiments with his reality engines, but much of what he conceives of being “over there” is based on childhood trauma. There are monsters over there, and Paul’s equations bring one “here,” to finish the work his parents began years ago.
Cicatrix is ~20k words, novella length. Email me if you’d like to be a first reader, let me know what needs fixing, and how to fix it. |
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Sister Teresa Velardi’s Daily Gift and More – The series of uplifting collaborative books filled with short stories and essays written by people from around the globe!
A Daily Gift is a growing collection of uplifting, collaborative books that bring together real stories from real people around the world—stories of hope, kindness, courage, faith, friendship, and inspiration. Each volume invites readers to slow down, reflect, and reconnect with what matters most through short, heartfelt essays meant to be revisited again and again. For contributors, A Daily Gift offers more than publication—it offers the opportunity to be part of a meaningful legacy. Your story becomes a source of comfort, encouragement, and light for readers navigating both ordinary days and life’s most difficult seasons. Contributors are featured alongside a global community of storytellers, receive name recognition in a professionally produced book, and take pride in knowing their words may be exactly what someone else needs to read at the right moment. By contributing, you are not only sharing your voice—you are investing in a project designed to uplift lives, build connection, and spread hope one story at a time.
She also shares her insights and knowledge on her YouTube channel and is looking for people to apply to be on Conversations That Make a Difference, |
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Graphic Artist Needed!!! The metahuman anthology Tales of the Northern Clan is a graphic novel in search of a artist(s).
Right now the big challenge to that plan is finding a graphic artist, so please send any graphic artists familiar with that format to us. Thanks. |
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Sister Vineeta Kommineni’s Zen Citizen Zen Citizen Rwanda – This month we are excited to share that our volunteer Gaius has launched ‘Zen Citizen Rwanda’. Gaius has been with us for a year now, mainly helping with our website. In his words, “I came to deeply appreciate the kind of impact regular citizens can create, and made a promise to bring the same civic spirit to Rwanda and start ZC Rwanda.
As a first step, he has developed ‘Urumuri’ a platform to enable citizens to submit information requests to public authorities and explore a searchable public archive of the collected information. “Urumuri” means light in Kinyarwanda/ bringing public information to light.
Gaius, you’ve created a circle of inspiration – thank you, and the best for ZC Rwanda!
Solving for the “29th day reshuffle” in RTI – Along with writing guides that cover undocumented processes and hacks and building simple tools that bridge gaps in government websites, we also examine: is the system actually built for people who are trying to do their jobs but can’t? What constraints are they operating under, and where does it break down? And importantly, is there a role for citizens not just in demanding accountability, but in helping the system work better?
When an RTI is filed, it lands with the PIO and the 30-day clock starts immediately. The PIO forwards it internally. Section officers are supposed to pull records and prepare draft responses, which the PIO compiles and sends to the citizen. Often in practice, once the PIO forwards the RTI application internally, it sits in a section, and around Day 25-29 returned to the PIO with a note “not our section.” The file gets bounced in this manner and the PIO is ultimately held responsible for the delay.
We’re working with a Public Information Officer (PIO) to build systems to help with workflow management for RTI applications; a system that can sends auto-reminders and gives visibility into who is holding the file, and atleast a semblance of escalation mechanism.
We are aware this is as much an attitude problem as a systems problem, and in the end our work may come to naught. But that’s not a reason to avoid putting a system in place!
Will keep you posted. |
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I’m Published Here – I’m proud to announce the publication of the ebook novelette Chrysalisby Northern Lights Publishing.
Chrysalis has been one of my headache projects since the early 1990s. For those who keep count, version 10 is the published version.
Chrysalis‘s original name – at least until we got the cover art – was Recovery Triptych and written shortly after I started my long path to healing. The orignal version was a bile release and completely necessary.
However, each succeeding rewrite left me wanting. Yes, I needed to get the pain out, but I hadn’t written an interesting story. Ten versions later, I’m satisfied.
Here’s the blurb and my explanatory afterword. Hope you like.
Chrysalis is a story of personal recovery from childhood and adult trauma told in three parts:
The Echo
Welcome to My Sandbox
The Stone in God’s Sling
The Echo
In a bizarre nightmare world, Gerrold is relentlessly attacked by grotesques which thwart his every attempt at escape until an angelic being, Acquiesce, appears and offers him a way out. Acquiesce does not do the work of escape for Gerrold and instead guides him to make his own discoveries about escaping and what it means to be free. With Acquiesce’s help, Gerrold realizes escaping the nightmare means challenging the taking control of the nightmare and robbing it of its power over him.
Welcome to My Sandbox
Freed from his personal hell, Gerrold realizes freedom comes with a price, and the price is to help others escape their personal hells. This means realizing some people would rather remain in their hells, meaning he is powerless to help him. But this confuses him; how can someone recognize they’re in hell and not want to escape?
Acquiesce explains freedom is a choice, that every moment of a person’s life is a matter of choice, and freedom’s responsibilities can be frightening to those not willing to do the work of healing and compassion.
This revelation causes Gerrold to realize some responsibilities are obvious, some are hidden, and now he wonders if he’s fully paid the price of his freedom. He decides to confront the source of his nightmare to learn the truth of it.
The Stone in God’s Sling
Gerrold travels to his nightmare’s source and faces its creator only to discover he has constructed the nightmare himself. Can Gerrold destroy the part of himself which has imprisoned him, set himself free, and heal from the things he’s let happen?
Fans of Guillermo del Toro’s and M. Night Shyamalan’s work will appreciate this dark psychological fantasy which forces the reader to recognize their own hells and offers paths out of them. Read it now and learn if Gerald finally escapes his self-constructed nightmare or succumbs to the doom of his past.
Author’s Afterword
Chrysalis‘s original title was Recovery Triptych. I wrote the first section in the late 1980s-early 1990s, unnamed, shortly after I began the heavy work of dealing with my own recovery from massive childhood and adult trauma. The original story was pretty much a bile dump on paper. Both powerful and graphic, but not a story. It was me doing the necessary work of getting rid of my rage at what happened to me, and doing it in a way few in my life ever respected but which I felt was my calling; through writing.
I continued the necessary healing work and realized there were more sections. I named the first section The Echo. Welcome to My Sandbox and The Stone in God’s Sling came over the course of several months. At this point in time, I was actively studying how to heal myself and others like me. The research covered several dozen fields and I’m pleased to say many of the methods I developed are now part of the trauma recovery cannon.
I need to state that the third section’s title, The Stone in God’s Sling, is thanks to Alexander Jablokov. He and I were in a Boston-based critique group together and an offhand comment he made about a story he was writing went in deep and stayed, so thank you, Alexander.
The triptych went through ten revisions over the years. I grew uncomfortable with bile extrusion – necessary at the time – because it both confounded the story and didn’t develop it. The resolution in The Stone in God’s Sling never satisfied me. Personally, I think I had neither the writing nor psycho-emotional chops to completely separate the story from my personal history.
I took the story out again earlier this year and read it as a reader and as an editor, constantly asking myself “What’s not working? How can I make it work?”
I asked Northern Lights’ graphics guru, John Scullin, to come up with a cover. His research on the subject and context came up with the butterfly emerging from its cocoon.
That locked it. Chrysalis.
Let me know what you think. |
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A Little Game – I emailed a friend. The subject line was “Lunch Friday?” and the body was “Same place, same time?”
My friend’s email client provided an AI summary of my email.
What was the summary?
The first five people to get back to me with a correct answer get a signed Chrysalis ebook. The first person to get back to me with answers that make me laugh gets a signed print copy of Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires Volume 2 (and no looking it up on the internet, folks!). |
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That’s it for March. See you next month!
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